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On November 10th, 2013, Microsoft released the November 2013 Update for the Lync 2013 desktop client. Some welcome news with bug fixes, and some new features. Some of the new features have been requested for quite a while, and others were a welcome surprise. Let’s take a look.

Video recording options

If you’ve ever tried to do a video recording of a Lync meeting, you know that the video quality has not been as high as you’d like. This update changes that. In the Recording options page, we now have options for 480p and HD options for 720p and 1080p. The recording still captures at 15 frames per second (fps). Obviously, if everyone on a conference is using 1080p, the size of the resulting file is going to be quite a bit larger than if you use lower settings. One other thing to keep in mind is that your camera needs to support these resolutions.

Photos in Instant Messaging stream

Next up is something seen in other instant messaging platforms. And that is user avatars in the IM stream. I don’t really see the need for this in a peer-to-peer conversation, but in a conference, I can certainly see this being beneficial. There is no option to disable this at this time, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a client side option in the future.

Photo Options

This is one option I’ve been asking for ever since the Lync 2010 option was removed in Lync 2013. Fellow MVP John Weber even submitted it on the Lync IdeaScale site. The ability to define a URL to an avatar. This allows you to put a picture out on a server and have others, such as federated contacts, see it instead of the “no photo” image. This also helps clear up the issue where a user configured a URL in the Lync 2010 client, then migrated to the 2013 client, only to find they could no longer change it, or even remove it.

You can also choose an existing picture to be copied to Active Directory, too.

This is the only option that requires us to also do something on the server. We need to add a Policy Entry to our client policies in order to enable the setting. If we don’t, then users don’t see the option in their client. To make the change, run the following in Lync Server Management Shell:

Once this change is made, the Lync client will need to pick up the changed policy either by signing out and back in, or waiting 8 hours for the client to refresh the policy.

PChat Escalation

This was one I wasn’t expecting. When you’re in a PChat room, you now see a new button at the bottom of the client. When you click the button, it opens a Lync meeting with everyone currently in the PChat room. It also pastes the unique meeting info into the room. This information is unique & generated each time the feature is used. One click to a meeting with everyone. Very cool. And all members in the room don’t need to have this update installed in order to participate in a meeting created by this feature.

Free/Busy issue resolved

I know a lot of people have been waiting for this. A previous update caused free/busy info to not automatically update your presence. This update resolves that problem.

List of all fixes

2907820 Inconsistent format and duplicate telephone numbers are displayed in a contact card in Lync 2013

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Migrating a customer from OCS 2007 R2 to Lync 2013 recently, I came across an issue that needed some extra work before I could continue.

When I opened the OCS 2007 R2 management console, I noticed a server listed under “Earlier Server Versions”.

I verified that the server no longer existed in Active Directory or DNS. The customer confirmed that it was an OCS 2007 server that had long been removed from service. This server would likely cause issues with publishing a Lync 2013 topology since OCS 2007 isn’t supported in a Lync topology. This server needed to be removed. Unfortunately, there was also no other servers in the environment with the OCS 2007 (non R2) management tools installed. And the OCS 2007 R2 management tools can’t remove the server. This meant that the only way I could remove this server is via our friend ADSIEdit. If you’ve got this issue, follow along as I show you how to remove it. Remember, we’re deep into Active Directory internals here, so tread lightly. Read twice, delete once. And for God’s sake, have a backup of AD.

Depending on where the OCS Global Settings are in Active Directory dictates where to connect to in ADSIEdit. These settings can info can either be in the root domain System container, such as if the environment originally held LCS and/or OCS 2007 servers and the settings were never migrated, or the Configuration container, where they would be if they had been migrated, or if OCS 2007 R2 was installed in a greenfield deployment. If you’re Global Settings are in the System container, open ADSIEdit and select “Configuration” in the Select a well known Naming Context field.

If your Global Settings are in the System container, as was the case for this customer, Select the “Default naming context”.

Expand the domain, then expand CN=System, then expand CN=Microsoft, then expand CN=RTC Service. Inside that, expand CN=Pools. You should see the pools and servers listed. Highlight CN=Pools on the left. On the right side, right-click on the server you wish to remove, and choose Delete.

Once that’s done, close ADSIEdit. Once AD replicates, open the OCS 2007 R2 Management Console and check. The “Earlier server versions” branch should now be empty.